help! MPC 60 CF problem saving/loading distortion

I've been a long time reader of the board, long time 2000xl user, first time poster. I've learned a lot through this site and I appreciate all of your knowledge!

So about a year ago I got an mpc 60 as payment from one of the studios I work at. I absolutely love the sound and feel! Anyway, the 60 came with the memory upgrade from back in the day, and I bought the newest roger linn os and installed it. I had problems with a high pitched noise (from the machine, not the signal), and the backlight was burnt out, so I had a tech install a new screen and power inverter, and the noise went away. Everything worked quite well, although the floppies were annoying to me, so I saved up and got the SCSI board and an Internal CF drive and recommended cards from scsiforsamplers or whatever they are called now.

My problem now is that sometimes when I save a sound or a kit when I power down and load it back up the sound may or may not be messed up and distorted. Usually it is just the end of the sound, sometimes it is in the middle or something, but it's a very glitchy/corrupted sounding distortion. I never had this problem saving to floppies, although some of the floppies I got with the mpc that were 20 years old and had kits on them would have a glitchy sound or two, but i just figured they were degraded. I'm pretty sure the problem is happening when I save and not when I load, because every time I load a glitchy sample it sounds distorted in an identical way, so it seems to be loading a crap file fine.

Has anyone had this problem or have any idea what it could be? It seemed to work before the scsi but maybe I was wrong?

Thanks in advance,

Joe "Stone Law" N

that is odd... well does it do that on every card? did you try small cards like the 64mb and less?

that is a good idea I haven't really tried that many cards.... I have reformatted one a few times, and I had one other card that I tried but not extensively... I am using 2 gig sandisk cards I believe, whatever was recommended. It seems to glitch equally on all partitions. I heard that taking monitor off on sampling while saving would help, but I haven't done it extensively enough. Could it be a ram problem? or some leaking component or cables shorting or something?

also, it seems that saving sequences have always worked, its just samples that get messed up. It either happens or doesn't. If i save a sound, it will either be clean or messed up later. if i save a program the sounds will all be clean or messed up, and much more often messed up. It really is mostly at the end of the sample, and seems to happen more for kicks cymbals and full range samples.

Stoneylawless wrote:that is a good idea I haven't really tried that many cards.... I have reformatted one a few times, and I had one other card that I tried but not extensively... I am using 2 gig sandisk cards I believe, whatever was recommended. It seems to glitch equally on all partitions. I heard that taking monitor off on sampling while saving would help, but I haven't done it extensively enough. Could it be a ram problem? or some leaking component or cables shorting or something?

well here is the deal, turning monitor off while sampling would help solve audible problems right? (trying to think of the logic in that suggestion) but that would mean you would hear the noise in the sample right then and there... we are talking about re-loading a saved thing.. so I rule that one out as saving is taking digital 1's and 0's and transfering that to the card... monitor being left on wont add or remove or swap the order of those 1's and 0's during the transfer.

The card, well I dont know for sure.. but the reason I suggested another card is because that one may be faulty.. or maybe the 60 doesn't work as well with larger cards.. I dont actually know because I still use the floppy drive. I mean 2 gig anything wasn't available back when that machine came out haha... not that really that matters but none the less...

the ram, very good point. I dont think the ram is faulty, but maybe you could try running a test while you have her opened up... disconnect the ram expansion board and see if the problem goes away or if it will load one of the individual sounds without distortion.


also, I highly recommend re-seating all the connectors and cables etc in the machine. I had some glitching and even random characters take over the screen quite regularly... and top it off my machine often wouldn't even boot (or so the display suggested) .. I disconnected everything and reconnected everything.. now she works like brand new (and looks brand new too minus the noise from the burned backlight)

The logic in the monitor on off would be that since the machine is over 20 years old, some components might be leaking into other ones, and some voltage in the wrong place could **** up my 1s an 0s. It's really just a guess tho, and I hope it's not the problem because I really value the monitor on function (i have a korg ms 20 and a kenton midi-cv and I like the synth just going through the 60 converters

Stoneylawless wrote:The logic in the monitor on off would be that since the machine is over 20 years old, some components might be leaking into other ones, and some voltage in the wrong place could **** up my 1s an 0s. It's really just a guess tho, and I hope it's not the problem because I really value the monitor on function (i have a korg ms 20 and a kenton midi-cv and I like the synth just going through the 60 converters

ahh I see, well I guess you would need to try some comparative tests etc... I hope it works in the end.. also can I suggest putting up the results of what you do try out here in the thread cause it might help out some other people.

could this happen because my disk drive is bad? there is a possibility that someone turned on the 60 without a disk in it, which is supposed to be bad. anyone have anything similar to this happen?

Stoneylawless wrote:could this happen because my disk drive is bad? there is a possibility that someone turned on the 60 without a disk in it, which is supposed to be bad. anyone have anything similar to this happen?

I highly doubt that is bad... cf drives are designed to remove and insert media... they would not design it to screw up.

that would be like if you started your car with your windows down then from then on your electric window motors wont raise them more then half way.

ive got too much work to do detailed tests right now, but i did notice that if sound was going though the monitor in while saving it would screw up the saving (for instance, a record was playing). I haven't tried with monitor off yet. I love to leave it on so i can scratch on beats to find sounds or have an external synth run through the convertors or pres or whatever it runs though when not sampling. I am going to do some monitor off tests later today ill let you know soon. perhaps i need to re seat things? Actually now i remember when I first installed the scsi and cf drive the mpc turned on but pads would not work. I re-opened it up and a connection was loose or something and it worked after that. Also, the inside of my mpc looks pretty grimey, is there a good way to clean it? or would that not even matter.

Stoneylawless wrote:ive got too much work to do detailed tests right now, but i did notice that if sound was going though the monitor in while saving it would screw up the saving (for instance, a record was playing). I haven't tried with monitor off yet. I love to leave it on so i can scratch on beats to find sounds or have an external synth run through the convertors or pres or whatever it runs though when not sampling. I am going to do some monitor off tests later today ill let you know soon. perhaps i need to re seat things? Actually now i remember when I first installed the scsi and cf drive the mpc turned on but pads would not work. I re-opened it up and a connection was loose or something and it worked after that. Also, the inside of my mpc looks pretty grimey, is there a good way to clean it? or would that not even matter.

I suggest those compressed air cans... get a new one, use a third of the can... it's worth it. I like using a paintbrush (unused) the dust off the internals but do that at your own risk... I have never seen an issue with that but if the bristles are plastic it may do some static... I dont think it will but I feel the need to point out a potential issue if giving one of my own techniques.

they have some of those paintbrushes that aren't plastic bristles that they used to use for oil paint (as some oil bases melted the plastic ones) .. you can get into the cracks and between resistors etc... use the air to brush what you brushed loose.

also, when working in the mpc, make sure to touch the chassis of the mpc (the metal case/frame) before touching anything with anything.. as it will ground the unit and prevent static.

hey mate, i got a 60 mk!! with the same issue did u manage to find out what was wrong im about to do some test my self to try solve the issue??

No I did not. My best guesses involved the voice chips, the converter trimpots/calibration, or a blown scsi fuse. I was almost ready to send it in but I got a dirt cheap vailixi 3000 on craigslist so I put the 60 aside. If you figure out what it is please let me (and the rest of the internet) know@!

Also possible but less likely: a jumper setting, or not formatting the disk properly

How full are the partitions your saving to ?
I had similar issues loading stuff from floppies .
If I made a disk from the floppy images at the yahoo user group the sounds would be messed up like you describe.
This only seemed to happen with images above a certain size.( I cant remember what size atm)
I found if I extracted a couple of samples from the image on my PC before writing it to a floppy all the other sounds would load ok.